Tis The Season To Be Symmetrical
by RisemboolRanger
Summary: One-shot. Side story to "Comfort Zone". When it's getting close to Christmas, who's worse to put up decorations with - a klutz or an OCD freak? The answer is both. But Brina's used to this new balance and she has to admit her tree does look good when it's symmetrical. Kid/OC


Brina was quite literally up to her elbows in gold tinsel when she heard a knock at the door. It was Saturday morning, so it wasn't entirely odd for her to have visitors... She just hadn't been expecting anyone in particular.

"Err... just a minute!" she called.

She'd looped the extensive length of tinsel around her arm and shoulders as she'd unpacked it to try and keep it from getting tangled up. Her attempt had clearly been futile though - all she'd succeeded in doing was getting tangled in it herself.

"Hold on a sec!" Brina shouted as another knock sounded at the door, desperately trying to pull the tinsel off.

She managed to unravel most of it and tossed it onto the bed behind her. She made to hurry to the door but caught her foot in one of the loops and almost tripped over. She managed to save herself by grabbing onto the dresser and impatiently kicked the remainder of the tinsel off her foot. She should have seen that one coming.

Fortunately, she made it to the door in one piece. And she was more than a little surprised at her visitor. "Kid! What are you doing here?"

"Well you said you were decorating your apartment today. So I thought I'd come and help," said Kid indifferently.

That surprised Brina even more. Not to mention she was quite touched by it. "Oh, wow, okay... That sounds like fun! Come on in; I'll show you what I've got to do."

Kid followed her inside. Brina hastily tidied the rest of the tinsel onto the bed. She knew what Kid could be like with anything that was out of place... She'd already set the Christmas tree up near the corner. All of the baubles and decorations for it were laid out on the bed too.

"These are all to go on the tree," she directed. "The tinsel's gonna go around the window. I just need to find the angel to go on the... why are you staring at me like that?"

"What's wrong with your hat?" Kid asked instead, by way of answering.

"Um, I don't know... What _is_ wrong with my hat?" Brina wasn't sure what he meant. It was red, wasn't it? Like any good Santa hat. It had the white fluffy pom-pom on the end of it. It wasn't dirty, it wasn't fraying... It was actually pretty new. So what was the issue?

"You can't just wear it to one side like that," Kid chastised her. "It's wrong." Without waiting for a response he adjusted the hat himself, tipping it so that it was flopping back in a central position instead. "There. That's much better."

Of course. The issue was with Kid, not with the hat. Brina resisted the urge to shake her head. "Okay, well seeing as _that's_ out of the way..." She couldn't quite stop a little sarcasm from slipping out. "Let's get cracking."

Brina ended up leaving Kid to pin the tinsel into place, after he'd criticised the number of drops she'd left when she'd done it and had then nearly fallen off the chair when trying to fix it. At least he seemed happier doing it himself. Brina decided to concentrate on decorating the tree instead.

Kid assisted as soon as he'd finished with the tinsel. Though it didn't take Brina long to notice that he wasn't so much as helping, but more re-doing all of the baubles and hanging snowflakes that she'd already positioned so far. She didn't bother questioning if her work hadn't been good enough. She knew that, again, it was Kid's issue rather than hers.

Though she couldn't quite keep herself from quipping, "So what do you do is there's an odd number of decorations?"

Kid just looked at her stonily from around the other side of the tree. "That would never happen."

"But say if it did? What if one got broken and you had another left over?" Brina pressed curiously.

"Any odd ones would be disposed of immediately."

Brina had a sudden image of Kid having a hissy fit and stamping on some odd baubles because they'd never be symmetrical. She choked back a laugh and quickly busied herself with counting out some more silver snowflakes. She'd gone with a gold and silver theme for her tree the last few years. She'd always loved how the colours went together.

Once the snowflakes were all out there was only one box left unopened. Brina discovered that it was her white LED lights. "Oh, I have lights to go on as well."

"Seriously?" Kid looked exasperated. "They should have gone on _before_ any of the other decorations. Now we'll risk knocking them off if we try to fit the lights around them."

"I just thought it'd be more of a challenge this way," said Brina lightly, casually brushing over the fact that she'd simply forgotten about them. Oops.

Kid sighed. "Where are the lights? I'll put them on."

"They're just in here..." Brina started pulling the mass of wire out of the box, then dropped it and shrieked when a large hairy spider came out too.

"What?!" Kid exclaimed, almost dropping the last bauble in surprise.

By this point Brina had already scrambled to safety on the bed. She pointed to the spider that was now crawling across the lights on the floor. "Get it out!"

Kid looked towards where she was pointing as he fixed the bauble onto the tree. "It's only a spider."

"But I don't _like_ them!" Brina protested.

Kid raised his eyebrows. "It's not going to do anything to you. It's probably more scared of you than you are of it."

"I don't care! It's fat and hairy and I don't like it. Get rid of it, please!" Brina insisted.

Kid obliged with a slight shrug of the shoulders and bent to pick the spider up. "Do you want me to put it outside?"

Brina looked horrified by the thought. "No, you have to kill it! If you put it outside it'll just come back!"

"I can't kill it!" Kid objected, as he inspected the spider more closely. "Look how _perfect_ it is!" He held it out towards Brina, who quickly recoiled.

"If I pull one of its legs off will you kill it then?" she grumbled. There was no way this spider could stay in her apartment just because it was symmetrical.

"You really don't like spiders, do you?" said Kid, like he was only just realising it.

"What was your first clue?" Brina replied sarcastically.

If anything, the idea just seemed to amuse Kid. "Fine. I'll flush it instead."

"Wait, you can't do that!" Brina protested.

"Why not?" asked Kid, bewildered. "You want me to get rid of it, don't you?"

"Yeah, but what if it doesn't die?" Brina pointed out. "It might crawl back up through the pipes!"

Kid's eyebrows practically disappeared into his hair line. "How on earth could a spider... Who told you that?!" he spluttered.

Brina was silent for several seconds before mumbling, "Adrian did."

Kid rolled his eyes. "I rest my case."

"_Fine_," Brina conceded. "Just _please_ get rid of the spider."

Now definitely amused, Kid shook his head and did as she said, disappearing into the room next door to dispose of the unsuspecting arachnid. Brina had never felt so relieved to hear the flush of a toilet before. She was certainly going to be having words with Adrian about him pulling her leg like that.

"So why exactly do you have a tattoo of a spider web?" asked Kid, coming back through into the bedroom. "It seems quite ironic really."

"That's exactly why. Because spiders frighten me," Brina quoted lightly. Kid just looked at her blankly so she added, "Y'know, like how Bruce Wayne chose the symbol of a bat in Batman Begins?" When she was still met with the same blank look she just muttered, "Oh, never mind."

With another slight raise of the eyebrows, Kid turned his attention back to the mess of lights on the floor. His forehead instantly furrowed with frown lines. "These are all going to need untangling first."

Brina had to admit that with the whole spider fiasco she hadn't taken the same care with the lights that she'd tried to take with the tinsel. She watched as Kid fetched them from the floor and sat down on the edge of the bed, setting himself to work.

"Do you want me to help and start from the other end?" she suggested.

"It's fine. I can do it," said Kid.

Brina knew that that was Kid's way of telling her that he didn't want her to help. But at least he was trying not to say it so obviously. He could be nice when he wanted to be. Certainly nicer than how they'd first started out! They really had come a long way since then.

She sat next to him on the bed, then twisted round and lay back, putting her head in his lap so that she was looking up at him. She smiled as a light shade of pink coloured his face slightly. Once upon a time she would have nearly had an embolism any time he'd gotten too close to her...

But then she'd discovered that he actually got just as embarrassed as she did by any physical contact between them. Maybe even more so. Though the faint blush remained lightly on Kid's cheeks for a little while, he didn't say anything or try to move her. Instead he concentrated on disentangling more wires.

"So did you come here today to make sure all my Christmas decorations would be symmetrical?" she asked casually. She still wasn't sure at what point she'd gotten so comfortable around Kid... Now she just found it fun to try and make _him_ blush.

"Actually I just thought it would be nice if we did it together," he replied without looking at her, still focusing intently on the lights.

"Oh." That definitely shut Brina up. It wasn't like Kid to be quite so forthright.

He was happy enough to talk for her though. "So... spiders, huh?"

"It's not that weird," Brina protested. "A lot of people don't like spiders."

"True. But I've never seen someone jump on the bed so quickly to get away from one before," Kid pointed out.

Brina frowned up at Kid and noticed that he was actually smirking to himself. "Very funny."

"I thought it was."

This time Brina had to fight not to smile too. Kid still looked amused by his own little comment. It was pretty damn cute... She noticed also that he'd finished unravelling the lights - damn, he'd done it way quicker than the time it would have taken her - so she somewhat reluctantly sat back up.

As she did she felt her hat slip slightly to one side. She'd just reached up to readjust it when Kid beat her to it. He tipped the top of it back once more. "Perfect," he said, satisfied, his face quite close to hers.

Brina felt herself flush. She decided to take that as a compliment and ignore the fact that it was the same word he'd used to describe a spider just minutes before. "'Tis the season to be symmetrical," she sang jokingly.

"It's _always_ the season to be symmetrical," Kid corrected her, as he got up. He took the lights with him and started winding them into the tree.

Again, he wouldn't let her help. But Brina was happy to concede that that was the best plan of action. She was sure that they'd have to reattach _all_ of the baubles if she was the one trying to do it. There was no doubt that her hand-eye coordination was nothing compared to Kid's.

And he _did_ let her put the angel on top of the tree herself, even if he still insisted on holding the chair steady for her. But of course Brina didn't mind. It wasn't like his doubts were unfounded. She was used to him being her acting balance.

Though she'd already fixed the angel into a completely central position that even Kid would be proud of, Brina then quietly and very gently nudged it over to one side. She wondered how long it would take Kid to notice once she'd gotten down...

She should have known she wouldn't even get that far.

"Don't even think about it."

Brina just smiled and tipped the angel back towards the middle. "Fa la la la la, la la la la," she sang innocently.

**XXX**

**Author's Note!**

Another Christmas themed one-shot! This really is becoming a bit of a tradition for me... And like I said on the last one, it's nice to get to write some pointless fluff and branch away from serious storylines for a change (especially when you have a hard case of writer's block).

Anyway, this is like a little side story to "Comfort Zone". Fast forward quite a bit on to where Brina and Kid are not quite in a relationship, but still kinda leaning towards it... Which you can probably tell from this anyway xD I really hope the last line translates properly. It's hard to write singing into text, especially when it's just fa la la!

Also, virtual cookies to whoever gets the hint behind Brina's colour scheme for her tree :) Merry Christmas everyone!


End file.
